Job News At Media Companies Continues To Be Bleak As 2017 Approaches

The 2017 fiscal year will begin in just a month, and the most common way media companies have been prepping for the New Year is by downsizing. The 2017 budget numbers more often than not are based in part on reduced expenses (and reducing workforces).

Some operations may have hired some temporary additional personnel to help with election coverage, but those temps no doubt will be back on the bricks, looking for work. They won’t be alone.

All fall there has been a steady drumbeat of bad news from media companies large and small.

Gannettannounced last month a plan to trim 350 jobs, or 2% of its workforce. The Wall Street Journal offered buyouts, then started making plans for layoffs. The first group set to go was the Greater New York coverage team, about 36 employees. Thomson Reuters said it would shed 2,000 jobs worldwide, with a twist that none of them would be from the company’s newsrooms.

Early this month, the World Series and the presidential election seemed to provide a respite to the drumbeat of layoffs, or at least alternative news to report. But nonetheless the bloodletting has continued.

Univision Communications, the Spanish-language media giant, announced significant third-quarter losses and a plan to ax 6% of its workforce, or about 250 jobs in its business and editorial departments.

The cuts haven’t always been big numbers, in the thousands or even hundreds. But the announcements still have headed in the same direction.

Bloombergsaid it planned to cut 30 jobs world-wide in a restructuring. And the two dailies serving the Motor City, the Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press, both have offered voluntary buyouts.

The Detroit News is offering a buyout to every editorial employee, regardless of position or length of service. And it’s unknown how many employees have to take the money and run for the paper to avoid layoffs once the buyouts are done.

The Free Press, on the other hand, needs to lay off exactly 17 people, with a number by various positions. Volunteers who are members of the union can get two weeks of severance per year of service, up to 20 weeks.

When and where does the bad news for media companies end?

It probably won’t any time soon. The turn into 2017 will offer a new beginning, a chance to put to work all new strategies that media executives have sold to boards and shareholders.

Maybe the next stories to report will be that those plans are succeeding gloriously. Maybe at least those plans can work well enough to slow down the layoffs and buyouts.